BERLIN, Jan 3 (Reuters) -

German airports were hit by a nationwide IT outage affecting

police systems at border control on Friday, causing disruption

and longer immigration queues for passengers from outside the

European Union's Schengen travel zone.

"There is currently a nationwide IT disruption," a

federal police spokesperson said by phone, forcing officers to

manually process passengers arriving from outside the

passport-free Schengen area.

The cause was not immediately known. The outage caused

queues of people waiting at border control at several German

airports, including Frankfurt, the country's busiest.

Berlin airport confirmed longer waiting times at

immigration for non-Schengen passengers.

"We can confirm that since around 2 p.m. (1300 GMT)

today, there have been disruptions to border control for flights

to and from the non-Schengen area," said a spokesperson for

Duesseldorf airport, saying passengers were being provided with

water.

The regional public broadcaster WDR reported that

passengers were waiting for two hours at immigration while

others were being kept on the plane.

(Reporting by Rachel More and Klaus Lauer; writing by Matthias

Williams, editing by Friederike Heine and Thomas Seythal)